The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells | Short Story Audiobook

[0:00 - 1:35] Gates of Imagination presents: "The Door in 

the Wall" by Herbert George Wells. Read by  

Arthur Lane.

Chapter 1.

One confidential evening, not three months ago, 

Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in  

the Wall. And at the time I thought that so 

far as he was concerned it was a true story.

He told it me with such a direct simplicity 

of conviction that I could not do otherwise  

than believe in him. But in the morning, in my own 

flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I  

lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, 

stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice,  

denuded of the focussed shaded table light, 

the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him  

and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and 

glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared,  

making them for the time a bright little 

world quite cut off from every-day realities,  

I saw it all as frankly incredible. “He was 

mystifying!” I said, and then: “How well he  

did it!... It isn’t quite the thing I should 

have expected him, of all people, to do well.”

Afterwards, as I sat up in bed and sipped 

my morning tea, I found myself trying  

to account for the flavour of reality that 

perplexed me in his impossible reminiscences,  

by supposing they did in some 

way suggest, present, convey—I  

hardly know which word to use—experiences 

it was otherwise impossible to tell.

[1:35 - 3:13] Well, I don’t resort to that explanation 

now. I have got over my intervening doubts.  

I believe now, as I believed at the moment 

of telling, that Wallace did to the very  

best of his ability strip the truth of his 

secret for me. But whether he himself saw,  

or only thought he saw, whether he himself 

was the possessor of an inestimable privilege,  

or the victim of a fantastic dream, I cannot 

pretend to guess. Even the facts of his death,  

which ended my doubts forever, throw no light on 

that. That much the reader must judge for himself.

I forget now what chance comment or criticism 

of mine moved so reticent a man to confide in  

me. He was, I think, defending himself against 

an imputation of slackness and unreliability  

I had made in relation to a great public 

movement in which he had disappointed me.  

But he plunged suddenly. “I 

have” he said, “a preoccupation—”

“I know,” he went on, after a pause that 

he devoted to the study of his cigar ash,  

“I have been negligent. The fact 

is—it isn’t a case of ghosts or  

apparitions—but—it’s an odd thing to tell 

of, Redmond—I am haunted. I am haunted by  

something—that rather takes the light out 

of things, that fills me with longings...”

He paused, checked by that English shyness that 

so often overcomes us when we would speak of  

moving or grave or beautiful things. “You were at 

Saint Athelstan’s all through,” he said, and for

[3:13 - 4:51] a moment that seemed to me quite irrelevant. 

“Well”—and he paused. Then very haltingly at  

first, but afterwards more easily, he began to 

tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the  

haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that 

filled his heart with insatiable longings that  

made all the interests and spectacle of worldly 

life seem dull and tedious and vain to him.

Now that I have the clue to it, the thing 

seems written visibly in his face. I have  

a photograph in which that look of detachment 

has been caught and intensified. It reminds me  

of what a woman once said of him—a woman who 

had loved him greatly. “Suddenly,” she said,  

“the interest goes out of him. He forgets you. He 

doesn’t care a rap for you—under his very nose...”

Yet the interest was not always out of 

him, and when he was holding his attention  

to a thing Wallace could contrive to be an 

extremely successful man. His career, indeed,  

is set with successes. He left me behind 

him long ago; he soared up over my head,  

and cut a figure in the world that I couldn’t 

cut—anyhow. He was still a year short of forty,  

and they say now that he would have been in 

office and very probably in the new Cabinet  

if he had lived. At school he always beat me 

without effort—as it were by nature. We were at  

school together at Saint Athelstan’s College in 

West Kensington for almost all our school time.  

He came into the school as my co-equal, but he 

left far above me, in a blaze of scholarships

[4:51 - 6:31] and brilliant performance. Yet I think I made a 

fair average running. And it was at school I heard  

first of the Door in the Wall—that I was to hear 

of a second time only a month before his death.

To him at least the Door in the Wall was a real 

door leading through a real wall to immortal  

realities. Of that I am now quite assured.

And it came into his life early, when he was  

a little fellow between five and six. I remember 

how, as he sat making his confession to me with  

a slow gravity, he reasoned and reckoned the 

date of it. “There was,” he said, “a crimson  

Virginia creeper in it—all one bright uniform 

crimson in a clear amber sunshine against a white  

wall. That came into the impression somehow, 

though I don’t clearly remember how, and there  

were horse-chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement 

outside the green door. They were blotched yellow  

and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that 

they must have been new fallen. I take it that  

means October. I look out for horse-chestnut 

leaves every year, and I ought to know. 

“If I’m right in that, I was about 

five years and four months old.”

He was, he said, rather a precocious little 

boy—he learned to talk at an abnormally early age,  

and he was so sane and “old-fashioned,” as people 

say, that he was permitted an amount of initiative  

that most children scarcely attain by seven or 

eight. His mother died when he was born, and he  

was under the less vigilant and authoritative care 

of a nursery governess. His father was a stern,

[6:31 - 8:02] preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little 

attention, and expected great things of  

him. For all his brightness he found life a little 

grey and dull I think. And one day he wandered.

He could not recall the particular 

neglect that enabled him to get away,  

nor the course he took among the West Kensington 

roads. All that had faded among the incurable  

blurs of memory. But the white wall and 

the green door stood out quite distinctly.

As his memory of that remote childish experience 

ran, he did at the very first sight of that door  

experience a peculiar emotion, an attraction, 

a desire to get to the door and open it and  

walk in. And at the same time he had 

the clearest conviction that either it  

was unwise or it was wrong of him—he could 

not tell which—to yield to this attraction.  

He insisted upon it as a curious thing that he 

knew from the very beginning—unless memory has  

played him the queerest trick—that the door was 

unfastened, and that he could go in as he chose.

I seem to see the figure of that little 

boy, drawn and repelled. And it was very  

clear in his mind, too, though why 

it should be so was never explained,  

that his father would be very 

angry if he went through that door.

Wallace described all these moments of hesitation 

to me with the utmost particularity. He went right  

past the door, and then, with his hands in 

his pockets, and making an infantile attempt

[8:02 - 9:42] to whistle, strolled right along beyond the end 

of the wall. There he recalls a number of mean,  

dirty shops, and particularly that of a 

plumber and decorator, with a dusty disorder  

of earthenware pipes, sheet lead ball taps, 

pattern books of wall paper, and tins of enamel.  

He stood pretending to examine these things, and 

coveting, passionately desiring the green door.

Then, he said, he had a gust of emotion. He made a 

run for it, lest hesitation should grip him again,  

he went plump with outstretched hand through the 

green door and let it slam behind him. And so,  

in a trice, he came into the garden 

that has haunted all his life.

It was very difficult for Wallace to give me his 

full sense of that garden into which he came.

There was something in the very air of it 

that exhilarated, that gave one a sense of  

lightness and good happening and well being; 

there was something in the sight of it that  

made all its colour clean and perfect and 

subtly luminous. In the instant of coming  

into it one was exquisitely glad—as only 

in rare moments and when one is young and  

joyful one can be glad in this world. 

And everything was beautiful there...

Wallace mused before he went on telling me. “You 

see,” he said, with the doubtful inflection of a  

man who pauses at incredible things, “there were 

two great panthers there... Yes, spotted panthers.  

And I was not afraid. There was a long wide path 

with marble-edged flower borders on either side,

[9:42 - 11:36] and these two huge velvety beasts were playing 

there with a ball. One looked up and came towards  

me, a little curious as it seemed. It came right 

up to me, rubbed its soft round ear very gently  

against the small hand I held out and purred. It 

was, I tell you, an enchanted garden. I know. And  

the size? Oh! it stretched far and wide, this way 

and that. I believe there were hills far away.  

Heaven knows where West Kensington had suddenly 

got to. And somehow it was just like coming home.

 

“You know, in the very moment the door swung 

to behind me, I forgot the road with its fallen  

chestnut leaves, its cabs and tradesmen’s carts, 

I forgot the sort of gravitational pull back to  

the discipline and obedience of home, I forgot 

all hesitations and fear, forgot discretion,  

forgot all the intimate realities of this life. 

I became in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy  

little boy—in another world. It was a world with 

a different quality, a warmer, more penetrating  

and mellower light, with a faint clear gladness 

in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in  

the blueness of its sky. And before me ran this 

long wide path, invitingly, with weedless beds  

on either side, rich with untended flowers, and 

these two great panthers. I put my little hands  

fearlessly on their soft fur, and caressed their 

round ears and the sensitive corners under their  

ears, and played with them, and it was as though 

they welcomed me home. There was a keen sense of  

home-coming in my mind, and when presently a tall, 

fair girl appeared in the pathway and came to meet

[11:36 - 13:11] me, smiling, and said Well?’ to me, and lifted 

me, and kissed me, and put me down, and led me  

by the hand, there was no amazement, but only 

an impression of delightful rightness, of being  

reminded of happy things that had in some strange 

way been overlooked. There were broad steps,  

I remember, that came into view between spikes of 

delphinium, and up these we went to a great avenue  

between very old and shady dark trees. All down 

this avenue, you know, between the red chapped  

stems, were marble seats of honour and statuary, 

and very tame and friendly white doves... 

“And along this avenue my girl-friend led 

me, looking down—I recall the pleasant lines,  

the finely-modelled chin of her sweet 

kind face—asking me questions in a soft,  

agreeable voice, and telling me things, pleasant 

things I know, though what they were I was never  

able to recall... And presently a little Capuchin 

monkey, very clean, with a fur of ruddy brown and  

kindly hazel eyes, came down a tree to us and 

ran beside me, looking up at me and grinning,  

and presently leapt to my shoulder. So 

we went on our way in great happiness...”

He paused.

“Go on,” I said.

“I remember little things. We passed an 

old man musing among laurels, I remember,  

and a place gay with paroquets, and came through a 

broad shaded colonnade to a spacious cool palace,

[13:11 - 14:50] full of pleasant fountains, full of beautiful 

things, full of the quality and promise of  

heart’s desire. And there were many things 

and many people, some that still seem to  

stand out clearly and some that are a little 

vague, but all these people were beautiful  

and kind. In some way—I don’t know how—it was 

conveyed to me that they all were kind to me,  

glad to have me there, and filling 

me with gladness by their gestures,  

by the touch of their hands, by the 

welcome and love in their eyes. Yes—”

He mused for awhile. “Playmates I 

found there. That was very much to me,  

because I was a lonely little boy. They 

played delightful games in a grass-covered  

court where there was a sun-dial set about 

with flowers. And as one played one loved...

“But—it’s odd—there’s a gap in my memory. I 

don’t remember the games we played. I never  

remembered. Afterwards, as a child, I spent long 

hours trying, even with tears, to recall the form  

of that happiness. I wanted to play it all over 

again—in my nursery—by myself. No! All I remember  

is the happiness and two dear playfellows who were 

most with me... Then presently came a sombre dark  

woman, with a grave, pale face and dreamy eyes, 

a sombre woman wearing a soft long robe of pale  

purple, who carried a book and beckoned and 

took me aside with her into a gallery above  

a hall—though my playmates were loth to have me 

go, and ceased their game and stood watching as

[14:50 - 16:30] I was carried away. ‘Come back to us!’ they cried. 

‘Come back to us soon!’ I looked up at her face,  

but she heeded them not at all. Her face was 

very gentle and grave. She took me to a seat  

in the gallery, and I stood beside her, 

ready to look at her book as she opened  

it upon her knee. The pages fell open. 

She pointed, and I looked, marvelling,  

for in the living pages of that book I 

saw myself; it was a story about myself,  

and in it were all the things that had 

happened to me since ever I was born...

“It was wonderful to me, because the 

pages of that book were not pictures,  

you understand, but realities.”

Wallace paused gravely—looked at me doubtfully.

“Go on,” I said. “I understand.”

“They were realities—yes, they must have been;  

people moved and things came and went in them; 

my dear mother, whom I had near forgotten;  

then my father, stern and upright, the servants, 

the nursery, all the familiar things of home. Then  

the front door and the busy streets, with traffic 

to and fro: I looked and marvelled, and looked  

half doubtfully again into the woman’s face and 

turned the pages over, skipping this and that,  

to see more of this book, and more, and so at 

last I came to myself hovering and hesitating  

outside the green door in the long white wall, 

and felt again the conflict and the fear.

[16:30 - 18:02] “‘And next?’ I cried, and would have turned on, 

but the cool hand of the grave woman delayed me.

“‘Next?’ I insisted, and struggled 

gently with her hand, pulling up  

her fingers with all my childish 

strength, and as she yielded and  

the page came over she bent down upon 

me like a shadow and kissed my brow.

“But the page did not show the enchanted garden, 

nor the panthers, nor the girl who had led me by  

the hand, nor the playfellows who had been so loth 

to let me go. It showed a long grey street in West  

Kensington, on that chill hour of afternoon before 

the lamps are lit, and I was there, a wretched  

little figure, weeping aloud, for all that I could 

do to restrain myself, and I was weeping because  

I could not return to my dear play-fellows who had 

called after me, ‘Come back to us! Come back to us  

soon!’ I was there. This was no page in a book, 

but harsh reality; that enchanted place and the  

restraining hand of the grave mother at whose 

knee I stood had gone—whither have they gone?”

He halted again, and remained for 

a time, staring into the fire.

“Oh! the wretchedness of 

that return!” he murmured.

“Well?” I said after a minute or so.

“Poor little wretch I was—brought back to 

this grey world again! As I realised the  

fulness of what had happened to me, I gave 

way to quite ungovernable grief. And the

[18:02 - 19:47] shame and humiliation of that public weeping 

and my disgraceful homecoming remain with me  

still. I see again the benevolent-looking old 

gentleman in gold spectacles who stopped and  

spoke to me—prodding me first with his 

umbrella. ‘Poor little chap,’ said he;  

‘and are you lost then?’—and me a London boy 

of five and more! And he must needs bring in  

a kindly young policeman and make a crowd of 

me, and so march me home. Sobbing, conspicuous  

and frightened, I came from the enchanted 

garden to the steps of my father’s house.

“That is as well as I can remember my vision of 

that garden—the garden that haunts me still. Of  

course, I can convey nothing of that indescribable 

quality of translucent unreality, that difference  

from the common things of experience that hung 

about it all; but that—that is what happened. If  

it was a dream, I am sure it was a day-time and 

altogether extraordinary dream... H’m!—naturally  

there followed a terrible questioning, by my aunt, 

my father, the nurse, the governess—everyone...

“I tried to tell them, and my father gave me my 

first thrashing for telling lies. When afterwards  

I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again 

for my wicked persistence. Then, as I said,  

everyone was forbidden to listen to me, to hear 

a word about it. Even my fairy tale books were  

taken away from me for a time—because I was 

‘too imaginative.’ Eh? Yes, they did that!  

My father belonged to the old school... And my 

story was driven back upon myself. I whispered

[19:47 - 21:19] it to my pillow—my pillow that was often damp and 

salt to my whispering lips with childish tears.  

And I added always to my official and less 

fervent prayers this one heartfelt request:  

‘Please God I may dream of the garden. Oh! take 

me back to my garden! Take me back to my garden!’

“I dreamt often of the garden. I may 

have added to it, I may have changed it;  

I do not know... All this you understand is an 

attempt to reconstruct from fragmentary memories  

a very early experience. Between that and the 

other consecutive memories of my boyhood there  

is a gulf. A time came when it seemed impossible 

I should ever speak of that wonder glimpse again.”

I asked an obvious question.

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember that I ever 

attempted to find my way back to the garden  

in those early years. This seems odd to me 

now, but I think that very probably a closer  

watch was kept on my movements after this 

misadventure to prevent my going astray. No,  

it wasn’t until you knew me that I tried for 

the garden again. And I believe there was a  

period—incredible as it seems now—when I 

forgot the garden altogether—when I was  

about eight or nine it may have been. Do you 

remember me as a kid at Saint Athelstan’s?”

“Rather!”

“I didn’t show any signs did I in 

those days of having a secret dream?”

[21:19 - 22:34] Chapter 2.

He looked up with a sudden smile.

“Did you ever play North-West Passage with 

me?... No, of course you didn’t come my way!”

“It was the sort of game,” he went on, “that 

every imaginative child plays all day. The  

idea was the discovery of a North-West Passage 

to school. The way to school was plain enough;  

the game consisted in finding some way that 

wasn’t plain, starting off ten minutes early in  

some almost hopeless direction, and working one’s 

way round through unaccustomed streets to my goal.  

And one day I got entangled among some rather 

low-class streets on the other side of Campden  

Hill, and I began to think that for once the 

game would be against me and that I should  

get to school late. I tried rather desperately 

a street that seemed a cul de sac, and found  

a passage at the end. I hurried through that 

with renewed hope. ‘I shall do it yet,’ I said,  

and passed a row of frowsy little shops 

that were inexplicably familiar to me,  

and behold! there was my long white wall and 

the green door that led to the enchanted garden!

“The thing whacked upon me suddenly.  

Then, after all, that garden, that 

wonderful garden, wasn’t a dream!”...

He paused.

[22:34 - 24:02] “I suppose my second experience with the 

green door marks the world of difference  

there is between the busy life of a schoolboy 

and the infinite leisure of a child. Anyhow,  

this second time I didn’t for a moment think of 

going in straight away. You see... For one thing  

my mind was full of the idea of getting 

to school in time—set on not breaking my  

record for punctuality. I must surely have felt 

some little desire at least to try the door—yes,  

I must have felt that... But I seem to remember 

the attraction of the door mainly as another  

obstacle to my overmastering determination to 

get to school. I was immediately interested by  

this discovery I had made, of course—I went 

on with my mind full of it—but I went on.  

It didn’t check me. I ran past tugging out my 

watch, found I had ten minutes still to spare,  

and then I was going downhill into familiar 

surroundings. I got to school, breathless,  

it is true, and wet with perspiration, 

but in time. I can remember hanging  

up my coat and hat... Went right by 

it and left it behind me. Odd, eh?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “Of course, I 

didn’t know then that it wouldn’t always be  

there. School boys have limited imaginations. I 

suppose I thought it was an awfully jolly thing  

to have it there, to know my way back to it, but 

there was the school tugging at me. I expect I  

was a good deal distraught and inattentive 

that morning, recalling what I could of the

[24:02 - 25:35] beautiful strange people I should presently see 

again. Oddly enough I had no doubt in my mind  

that they would be glad to see me... Yes, I must 

have thought of the garden that morning just as a  

jolly sort of place to which one might resort in 

the interludes of a strenuous scholastic career.

“I didn’t go that day at all. The next day was 

a half holiday, and that may have weighed with  

me. Perhaps, too, my state of inattention 

brought down impositions upon me and docked  

the margin of time necessary for the detour. 

I don’t know. What I do know is that in the  

meantime the enchanted garden was so much upon 

my mind that I could not keep it to myself.

“I told—What was his name?—a ferrety-looking 

youngster we used to call Squiff.”

“Young Hopkins,” said I.

“Hopkins it was. I did not like telling him, I 

had a feeling that in some way it was against  

the rules to tell him, but I did. He was walking 

part of the way home with me; he was talkative,  

and if we had not talked about the enchanted 

garden we should have talked of something else,  

and it was intolerable to me to think 

about any other subject. So I blabbed.

“Well, he told my secret. The next day in the 

play interval I found myself surrounded by half  

a dozen bigger boys, half teasing and wholly 

curious to hear more of the enchanted garden.  

There was that big Fawcett—you remember 

him?—and Carnaby and Morley Reynolds. You

[25:35 - 27:13] weren’t there by any chance? No, I think 

I should have remembered if you were...

“A boy is a creature of odd feelings. 

I was, I really believe, in spite of my  

secret self-disgust, a little flattered to have 

the attention of these big fellows. I remember  

particularly a moment of pleasure caused by the 

praise of Crawshaw—you remember Crawshaw major,  

the son of Crawshaw the composer?—who said 

it was the best lie he had ever heard. But  

at the same time there was a really painful 

undertow of shame at telling what I felt was  

indeed a sacred secret. That beast Fawcett 

made a joke about the girl in green—.”

 

Wallace’s voice sank with the keen memory of that 

shame. “I pretended not to hear,” he said. “Well,  

then Carnaby suddenly called me a young liar 

and disputed with me when I said the thing  

was true. I said I knew where to find the green 

door, could lead them all there in ten minutes.  

Carnaby became outrageously virtuous, and said 

I’d have to—and bear out my words or suffer. Did  

you ever have Carnaby twist your arm? Then 

perhaps you’ll understand how it went with  

me. I swore my story was true. There was nobody 

in the school then to save a chap from Carnaby  

though Crawshaw put in a word or so. Carnaby 

had got his game. I grew excited and red-eared,  

and a little frightened, I behaved 

altogether like a silly little chap,  

and the outcome of it all was that instead 

of starting alone for my enchanted garden,

[27:13 - 28:33] I led the way presently—cheeks flushed, ears 

hot, eyes smarting, and my soul one burning  

misery and shame—for a party of six mocking, 

curious and threatening school-fellows. 

“We never found the white 

wall and the green door...”

“You mean?—”

“I mean I couldn’t find it. I 

would have found it if I could.

“And afterwards when I could go alone I couldn’t 

find it. I never found it. I seem now to have been  

always looking for it through my school-boy 

days, but I’ve never come upon it again.”

“Did the fellows—make it disagreeable?”

“Beastly... Carnaby held a council over me for 

wanton lying. I remember how I sneaked home and  

upstairs to hide the marks of my blubbering. 

But when I cried myself to sleep at last it  

wasn’t for Carnaby, but for the garden, for 

the beautiful afternoon I had hoped for,  

for the sweet friendly women and 

the waiting playfellows and the  

game I had hoped to learn again, 

that beautiful forgotten game...

“I believed firmly that if I had not told... 

I had bad times after that—crying at night  

and wool-gathering by day. For two terms I 

slackened and had bad reports. Do you remember?  

Of course you would! It was you—your beating 

me in mathematics that brought me back to the

[28:33 - 30:10] grind again.”

Chapter 3.

For a time my friend stared silently into 

the red heart of the fire. Then he said:  

"I never saw it again until I was seventeen.

"It leapt upon me for the third time—as I was 

driving to Paddington on my way to Oxford and  

a scholarship. I had just one momentary glimpse. 

I was leaning over the apron of my hansom smoking  

a cigarette, and no doubt thinking myself 

no end of a man of the world, and suddenly  

there was the door, the wall, the dear sense 

of unforgettable and still attainable things.

"We clattered by—I too taken by surprise 

to stop my cab until we were well past and  

round a corner. Then I had a queer moment, 

a double and divergent movement of my will:  

I tapped the little door in the roof 

of the cab, and brought my arm down  

to pull out my watch. 'Yes, sir!' said the 

cabman, smartly. 'Er—well—it's nothing,' I  

cried. 'My mistake! We haven't much 

time! Go on!' And he went on....

"I got my scholarship. And the night after 

I was told of that I sat over my fire in my  

little upper room, my study, in my father's 

house, with his praise—his rare praise—and  

his sound counsels ringing in my ears, and I 

smoked my favourite pipe—the formidable bulldog  

of adolescence—and thought of that door in the 

long white wall. 'If I had stopped,' I thought,

[30:10 - 31:52] 'I should have missed my scholarship, I 

should have missed Oxford—muddled all the  

fine career before me! I begin to see 

things better!' I fell musing deeply,  

but I did not doubt then this career of 

mine was a thing that merited sacrifice.

"Those dear friends and that clear atmosphere 

seemed very sweet to me, very fine but remote.  

My grip was fixing now upon the world. I saw 

another door opening—the door of my career."

He stared again into the fire. Its red 

light picked out a stubborn strength  

in his face for just one flickering 

moment, and then it vanished again.

"Well," he said and sighed, "I have served that 

career. I have done—much work, much hard work. But  

I have dreamt of the enchanted garden a thousand 

dreams, and seen its door, or at least glimpsed  

its door, four times since then. Yes—four 

times. For a while this world was so bright  

and interesting, seemed so full of meaning and 

opportunity, that the half-effaced charm of the  

garden was by comparison gentle and remote. Who 

wants to pat panthers on the way to dinner with  

pretty women and distinguished men? I came down to 

London from Oxford, a man of bold promise that I  

have done something to redeem. Something—and 

yet there have been disappointments....

"Twice I have been in love—I will not dwell 

on that—but once, as I went to someone who,  

I knew, doubted whether I dared to come, I took 

a short cut at a venture through an unfrequented

[31:52 - 33:26] road near Earl's Court, and so happened 

on a white wall and a familiar green door.  

'Odd!' said I to myself, 'but I thought this place 

was on Campden Hill. It's the place I never could  

find somehow—like counting Stonehenge—the 

place of that queer daydream of mine.' And  

I went by it intent upon my purpose. 

It had no appeal to me that afternoon.

"I had just a moment's impulse to try the 

door, three steps aside were needed at the  

most—though I was sure enough in my heart that 

it would open to me—and then I thought that  

doing so might delay me on the way to that 

appointment in which I thought my honour  

was involved. Afterwards I was sorry for my 

punctuality—might at least have peeped in,  

I thought, and waved a hand to those panthers, 

but I knew enough by this time not to seek  

again belatedly that which is not found by 

seeking. Yes, that time made me very sorry....

"Years of hard work after that, and never 

a sight of the door. It's only recently it  

has come back to me. With it there has come a 

sense as though some thin tarnish had spread  

itself over my world. I began to think of 

it as a sorrowful and bitter thing that I  

should never see that door again. Perhaps I was 

suffering a little from overwork—perhaps it was  

what I've heard spoken of as the feeling of 

forty. I don't know. But certainly the keen  

brightness that makes effort easy has 

gone out of things recently, and that

[33:26 - 35:01] just at a time—with all these new political 

developments—when I ought to be working. Odd,  

isn't it? But I do begin to find life toilsome, 

its rewards, as I come near them, cheap. I began  

a little while ago to want the garden quite 

badly. Yes—and I've seen it three times."

"The garden?"

"No—the door! And I haven't gone in!"

He leant over the table to me, with an enormous 

sorrow in his voice as he spoke. "Thrice I have  

had my chance—thrice! If ever that door offers 

itself to me again, I swore, I will go in,  

out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter 

of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. I  

will go and never return. This time I will stay... 

I swore it, and when the time came—I didn't go.

"Three times in one year have I passed that door  

and failed to enter. Three 

times in the last year.

 

"The first time was on the night of the snatch 

division on the Tenants' Redemption Bill,  

on which the Government was saved by a majority 

of three. You remember? No one on our side—perhaps  

very few on the opposite side— expected the 

end that night. Then the debate collapsed like  

eggshells. I and Hotchkiss were dining with his 

cousin at Brentford; we were both unpaired, and we  

were called up by telephone, and set off at once 

in his cousin's motor. We got in barely in time,

[35:01 - 36:41] and on the way we passed my wall and door—livid 

in the moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the  

glare of our lamps lit it, but unmistakable. 'My 

God!' cried I. 'What?' said Hotchkiss. 'Nothing!'  

I answered, and the moment passed.

"'I've made a great sacrifice,' I  

told the whip as I got in. 'They 

all have,' he said, and hurried by.

"I do not see how I could have done otherwise 

then. And the next occasion was as I rushed to  

my father's bedside to bid that stern old man 

farewell. Then, too, the claims of life were  

imperative. But the third time was different; it 

happened a week ago. It fills me with hot remorse  

to recall it. I was with Gurker and Ralphs—it's 

no secret now, you know, that I've had my talk  

with Gurker. We had been dining at Frobisher's, 

and the talk had become intimate between us.  

The question of my place in the reconstructed 

Ministry lay always just over the boundary of  

the discussion. Yes—yes. That's all settled. It 

needn't be talked about yet, but there's no reason  

to keep a secret from you.... Yes—thanks! 

thanks! But let me tell you my story.

"Then, on that night things were very much in the 

air. My position was a very delicate one. I was  

keenly anxious to get some definite word from 

Gurker, but was hampered by Ralphs' presence.  

I was using the best power of my brain to 

keep that light and careless talk not too  

obviously directed to the point that concerned 

me. I had to. Ralphs' behaviour since has more

[36:41 - 38:21] than justified my caution.... Ralphs, I knew, 

would leave us beyond the Kensington High Street,  

and then I could surprise Gurker by a sudden 

frankness. One has sometimes to resort to  

these little devices.... And then it was 

that in the margin of my field of vision  

I became aware once more of the white wall, 

the green door before us down the road.

"We passed it talking. I passed 

it. I can still see the shadow of  

Gurker's marked profile, his opera hat 

tilted forward over his prominent nose,  

the many folds of his neck wrap going before 

my shadow and Ralphs' as we sauntered past.

"I passed within twenty inches of the 

door. 'If I say good-night to them,  

and go in,' I asked myself, 'what will happen?' 

And I was all a-tingle for that word with Gurker.

"I could not answer that question in the tangle 

of my other problems. 'They will think me mad,'  

I thought. 'And suppose I vanish now!—-Amazing 

disappearance of a prominent politician!' That  

weighed with me. A thousand inconceivably petty 

worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis."

Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, 

and, speaking slowly, "Here I am!" he said.

"Here I am!" he repeated, "and my chance has gone 

from me. Three times in one year the door has  

been offered me—the door that goes into peace, 

into delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming,  

a kindness no man on earth can know. And I 

have rejected it, Redmond, and it has gone"

[38:21 - 39:57] "How do you know?"

"I know. I know. I am left now 

to work it out, to stick to the  

tasks that held me so strongly when my moments 

came. You say I have success—this vulgar,  

tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have 

it." He had a walnut in his big hand.  

"If that was my success," he said, and 

crushed it, and held it out for me to see.

"Let me tell you something, Redmond. This loss 

is destroying me. For two months, for ten weeks  

nearly now, I have done no work at all, except the 

most necessary and urgent duties. My soul is full  

of inappeasable regrets. At nights—when it is less 

likely I shall be recognised—I go out. I wander.  

Yes. I wonder what people would think of that if 

they knew. A Cabinet Minister, the responsible  

head of that most vital of all departments, 

wandering alone—grieving—sometimes near audibly  

lamenting— for a door, for a garden!"

Chapter 4.

I can see now his rather pallid face, and the 

unfamiliar sombre fire that had come into his  

eyes. I see him very vividly to-night. 

I sit recalling his words, his tones,  

and last evening's Westminster Gazette still 

lies on my sofa, containing the notice of his  

death. At lunch to-day the club was busy 

with his death. We talked of nothing else.

They found his body very early yesterday 

morning in a deep excavation near East

[39:57 - 41:30] Kensington Station. It is one of two shafts 

that have been made in connection with an  

extension of the railway southward. It 

is protected from the intrusion of the  

public by a hoarding upon the high road, 

in which a small doorway has been cut for  

the convenience of some of the workmen who 

live in that direction. The doorway was left  

unfastened through a misunderstanding between 

two gangers, and through it he made his way....

My mind is darkened with questions and riddles.

It would seem he walked all the way from the 

House that night—he has frequently walked home  

during the past Session—and so it is I figure his 

dark form coming along the late and empty streets,  

wrapped up, intent. And then did the pale 

electric lights near the station cheat the  

rough planking into a semblance of white? Did 

that fatal unfastened door awaken some memory?

Was there, after all, ever any 

green door in the wall at all?

I do not know. I have told his story as he told it 

to me. There are times when I believe that Wallace  

was no more than the victim of the coincidence 

between a rare but not unprecedented type of  

hallucination and a careless trap, but that indeed 

is not my profoundest belief. You may think me  

superstitious, if you will, and foolish; but, 

indeed, I am more than half convinced that he had,  

in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, 

something—I know not what—-that in the

[41:30 - 42:21] guise of wall and door offered him an outlet, 

a secret and peculiar passage of escape into  

another and altogether more beautiful world. At 

any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the  

end. But did it betray him? There you touch the 

inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of  

vision and the imagination. We see our world 

fair and common, the hoarding and the pit.  

By our daylight standard he walked out of 

security into darkness, danger, and death.

But did he see like that?

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